Queensland lifts its uranium ban, but is the price worth the cost?

Authors

Senior Lecturer and Co-ordinator Research Student Academic Support, James Cook University

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The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Miners are being invited to apply to restart the industry under the Queensland’s government’s uranium action plan, which will mean Canadian company Mega Uranium can reopen the Ben Lomond and other mines in north Queensland.

Given the prices are so low that The Australian has reported that Four Mile is already losing money, while the Beverley mine has been mothballed since January, why are Australian states looking to open more mines?

Uranium mining at Queensland’s Ben Lomond site was halted in 1982, ahead of the “three mines policy” introduced by the incoming Hawke Labor government in 1983. The policy restricted Australian uranium mining to three sites: Ranger and Nabarlek in the Northern Territory and Olympic Dam at Roxby Downs in South Australia.

The three mines policy was officially abandoned in 1996 by the Howard government, but uranium mining has been slow to flourish since then.

Until last week, just four mines operated. Narbarlek was decommissioned in 1994/95, while South Australia’s Beverley mine (currently mothballed) opened in 2001, Honeymoon in 2011 and now Four Mile has opened.

Our nuclear history

With Australia holding around a third of the planet’s uranium resources, it’s no surprise politicians have toyed with exploiting the atom since World War II.

In 1941, Australian physicist Mark Oliphant indiscreetly told an Australian diplomat in the UK that nuclear energy derived from uranium was being developed secretly for both war and industry.

After World War II, the boom in infrastructure building made powering growth even more important. Uranium was known to be a high-grade energy source: about 120,000 tonnes of black coal (or 350,000 tonnes of brown coal) would need to be burnt to obtain the energy of just one tonne of uranium fuel.

During the 1950s, as the British tested their nuclear weapons in Australia, nuclear power seemed to promise a self-sufficient energy future, not to mention export wealth and national security.

Maralinga trees after a blast.Courtesy of Liz Tynan

In 1949, extensive uranium deposits were discovered in the Northern Territory, at Rum Jungle, and in Queensland and South Australia soon after. Uranium from these mines powered British nuclear weapons that were tested on Australian soil. The later Non-Proliferation Treaty that Australia signed in 1970 and ratified in 1972 restricted the use of Australian uranium to peaceful purposes.

In the 1970s, under the Fraser Coalition government, Australia became a major exporter of uranium. Japan, Iran, Italy and the European Economic Community emerged as buyers, and after much political debate, the terms of sale for Australian uranium were finally struck. The ALP, frequently conflicted over uranium mining and export, adopted as its policy a moratorium on export of uranium, and would later amend this to the compromise of the three mines policy, which it has since abandoned.

Is Australia set for a new nuclear era?

Until recently, Australia banned the sale of uranium to India since that country was not party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Under Labor’s Julia Gillard, that ban was overturned, potentially opening a huge new market.

Uranium prices have dropped 30% in the past 12 months, to a low of $US28 a pound. Not until 2020, with the probable reopening of the Japanese nuclear power stations and expansion of the markets in China, is uranium expected to turn a profit.

Queensland’s efforts should be [put] on facilitating the use of existing ports and shipping lanes by industry for the export of uranium.

However, the Port of Townsville sits within the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area and close to sensitive environments including the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, dugong protected areas, seagrass beds, fringing coral reefs and mangrove forests.

I think shipping of any toxic cargo would be of concern. But really we would have to see a proposal and we would have to consider that.

So this is set to be a contentious issue: while economic development of the north has bipartisan support at a federal, state and local government level, a number of locals and environmental groups have said they will challenge any plans to reopen uranium mines and exports from Queensland.

The big question for Queensland residents to consider now is whether the return of uranium mining to the state will be worth the wait for the uranium price to recover, given the risks attached to transporting the mineral through populated and environmentally-sensitive areas.